I did an important post on this blog a few months ago about the importance of having a decent virus checker, spyware checker and firewall installed on your PC. Some viruses can be particularly stubborn, and are tricky to remove to say the least.

One important thing to remember, is that the free firewall that comes with Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 is ok to a point, but it only blocks data coming in, not going out. Why does this matter I hear you ask? Well, if you are unlucky enough to have your machine infected, it will do much less damage if the virus/spyware is unable to send data back out again to their websites. Think of it like breaking into someones house, once you are inside, it’s a lot easier to get out again. It’s the same with your machine. Best to make it difficult for the hackers even if they manage to break into your machine, make it hard for them to get out again.

I’m a massive fan of freeware software, and have many times tried bought products like Norton Internet security only to dump them in favour of free products like AVG free, Avast free , SuperAntiSpyware free etc. All products that have got me and my customers out of the fertilizer business on several occasions.

However, it seems that the hackers are getting more advanced and now it can be only a matter of visiting a website to be infected.

I had felt recently that a machine of mine was just not running as it should, very slow and seemed sometimes to have a mind of its own.

I ran my usual set of stalwarts programs to give my machine a thorough medical, and nothing came up whatsoever. I even tried PCTOOLS Spyware Doctor, still no joy. So several virus checkers later, and even more spyware checkers, I was still scratching my head. There isn’t a single virus checker out there that can catch-all viruses, there only as good as the updates that you receive, but my usual suspects hadn’t come up with a thing.

Finally a tried a bought product (Webroot SpySweeper), thankfully you can trial most of these bought products to see if they find any problems before you buy, then pay for them to remove any problems. SpySweeper also didn’t come up with anything relevant when i ran a sweep of my system. However, as part of the program it does have a firewall that includes a list of known hacker/spyware/virus websites that’s constantly updated that it checks against continually. If your machine tries to connect to any of these suspect websites, a warning message is displayed and you’re given the option to block or allow a connection to be made.

Without this program I would have never known that my machine was infected & that it was in constant communication with these dodgy websites. None of the free programs, or any other bought program I have seen offer this feature.

I decided to buy the full internet security version of this software that included a virus checker. I ran the virus checker, it identified and removed two viruses. It turned out that the viruses were java related, java is of course used on many websites on the internet. Its most likely that I picked up these viruses by visiting a website.

Firefox is my preferred web browser, I find it faster than Internet Explorer and easier to use. I’ve found a great free Firefox add in that allows you to control JavaScript/Java/… execution scripts selectively, on the sites you trust. NoScript can effectively block Javaâ„¢, Silverlightâ„¢, Flash® and other plugins on untrusted sites. See here http://noscript.net/features

So hopefully, if you take these steps you won’t get caught out like I did.

Rob

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